Chuck Hawks rips Tikka a new one

[Art Eatman]

What I see in the changes in plain-vanilla rifles over the last 60 years is that the new stuff shoots much tighter groups, but generally doesn't have the exterior finish of yesteryear's.

Better machining; less hand finishing. For a hunting rifle, a $2,500 custom job won't really do you any better in the field than something in the $400 range.

For instance, I saw an ad in Shotgun News for Bo Clerke match-target barrels for a 10/22 at $80. Mr. Clerke told me his bores are held to a tolerance of one ten-thousandth of an inch. That's a whole bunch better than what Winchester was doing with pre-'64 Model 70s.

But I don't like plastic.

Art

 

[mrmeval]

He's a gun reviewer bashing gun reviewers. I agree with his assessment of himself. "Theya nevah mayke theyum lak theya usesta."

I'm glad I don't pay to read reviews.

 

[Pafrmu]

Doesn't the Tikka outshoot most of the guns CH recommends?

 

[Karbon]

Yup.

 

[Cosmoline]

Most Remchesters do nothing for me. They're cheaply made and full of cut corners to save a few bucks. But there are still some good hunting rifles if you get past the hype. Ruger's ugly, underrated M-77 Mark II's have earned a good reputation for toughness here. The CZ-550's also tend to be a cut above.

I don't agree with Chuck completely, but he's dead on about not trusting gun rag hacks. When was the last time one of those clowns stood up and said "THIS SAFETY IS STUPID!" or "DO NOT BUY THIS RIFLE!" They know who butters their bread.

I don't know about the T-3 from personal experience, but I can tell you I've seen a bunch of them for sale on the local bulletin boards. That's rarely a good sign.

 

[ArmedBear]

"THIS SAFETY IS STUPID!" or "DO NOT BUY THIS RIFLE!"

Gun Tests says that sort of thing ALL THE TIME!

Y'all need to cancel your subscriptions to everything else (well, except AR or whatever else you get free with an NRA membership) and get Gun Tests. $24/year and worth every penny. They even do complete tests of milsurps that come down the pike.

 

[ArmedBear]

Ruger's ugly, underrated M-77 Mark II's have earned a good reputation for toughness here.

Yeah. Call Rugers ugly if you want (or just say that Ruger has an odd aesthetic, which is true whether or not you like the look), but calling them sloppily-made or flimsy is WAY off the mark.

Winchester, BTW, no longer makes rifles, or anything else. "Winchester" is just a name stamped on imports, their classic American reissues are Made in Japan, and their new rifle is an uglier Browning with a big W on the side!

SXR

BAR

But when Winchester DID make rifles, their recent Model 70 Classic Featherweight was a well-put-together gun, with no signs of "sloppiness" or shoddy construction, at least on the examples I got my hands on.

One can have lots of complaints, but again, Hawks is comparing nicer production "working guns" to old handmade customs. Compare old "working guns" to new ones, head to head, especially accounting for price in constant dollars, and the results might be more interesting.

 

[Correia]

Since I write for gun magazines, I'm going to have to say that only about half of the writers are hacks. But then again, I don't do much with pretty guns.

 

[mrmeval]

The only Ruger I ever owned, a 10/22 came filled with sand. I'd call that sloppy in that case. Probably a Friday build.

 

[270Win]

Filled ... with sand??!

Do tell! There sure sounds like a good story there.

 

[rbernie]

I shot my first deer a handful of years ago with a 1895 Chilean Mauser. Almost one hundred and ten years after its date of manufacture, it still shoots close to MOA and is capable of being used as a fine hunting rifle. It shows the dings and dents of hard use, but its metal construction and fine build quality allows it to continue working today and into the foreseeable future.

I suspect that Chuck's point is that a Tikka made today isn't likely to be able to make that claim in fifty years from now, much less a hundred. Heck, I watched a guy drop a rifle in the field not six months ago and shatter his rifle's plastic trigger guard to smithereens. It was only by the grace of the overlords of all that is good that his rifle's plastic-n-potmetal trigger didn't get FUBAR'ed along with the trigger guard.

I'm sure that the manufacturer of that rifle touts the four ounces of weight savings in that plastic trigger guard as an advantage. But I suspect that the real savings was likely pure economics for the manufacturer. In this case, that cost/weight savings almost caused the end of an expensive out-of-state hunt for the rifle's owner.

Everyone gets to make the call as to what they're willing to abide in the tradeoff between cost and quality. It's just a shame to NOT understand what you're missing until it bites you in the butt.

 

[mrmeval]

270win,

I caught it before it was a problem. I don't know what the stuff was, sand blasting media, something they cleaned with or skeet surfing dood used it then brought it back and I got it 'new'. As far as I could tell it was new, not a mark on it. It was my first 22 rifle. I learned a lot about it by having to disassemble it farther than the included manual called for then cleaning it and lubricating it then figuring out how to put it together again. I did't bother Ruger about it. It loved Australian made Winchester subsonics. I eventually gave it to my Mom because she said she wanted it. I didn't buy Ruger again because of the AWB deal and probably never will. Without that I'd probably own a number of Ruger products but I'd check them for sand and sex wax first.

 

[benor]

There's a gun for everyone

I placed my order for a Savage 10FLP in 223 this week. I really wanted the 12VLP, but couldn't get left-handed locally and choose to not buy guns through the net. This gun will be my 200 and 300 yard plinker and practice rifle. I'm mounting a Bushnell Elite 4200 4-16x50 for optics.

Before settling on Savage I looked at Tikka, Ruger, Remington, Browning, CZ, Winchester, Weatherby, and I'm probably missing one or two others. The Savage stands out for price and out of the box accuracy. The heavy varmint barrels are superb.

I own a SAKO 7mm mag for hunting. I also have a Rem 700 in 30-06 as a backup. Both are left handed actions. The SAKO is sweet, but it's an expensive SAKO, not a TIKKA. The Remington also is a straight shooter, but isn't quite as straight as my SAKO.

The TIKKA along with so many of the others, including the Savage I ordered, have black plastic stocks that are functional but not pretty. The TIKKA felt cheap in my hands - too much plastic. I opted for price, accuracy, and a trigger that feels pretty good out of the box.

I tend to agree with the original posting. Sako cuts too many corners with its TIKKA. Stock synthetics on most all brands are too lite and flimsy. Many barrel finishes look cheap and kiddish. Some triggers (especially CZ) are just plain nasty.

To each his or her own. Buy what works for you. Sell what doesn't.

 

[benor]

There's a gun for everyone

I placed my order for a Savage 10FLP in 223 this week. I really wanted the 12VLP, but couldn't get left-handed locally and choose to not buy guns through the net. This gun will be my 200 and 300 yard plinker and practice rifle. I'm mounting a Bushnell Elite 4200 4-16x50 for optics.

Before settling on Savage I looked at Tikka, Ruger, Remington, Browning, CZ, Winchester, Weatherby, and I'm probably missing one or two others. The Savage stands out for price and out of the box accuracy. The heavy varmint barrels are superb.

I own a SAKO 7mm mag for hunting. I also have a Rem 700 in 30-06 as a backup. Both are left handed actions. The SAKO is sweet, but it's an expensive SAKO, not a TIKKA. The Remington also is a straight shooter, but isn't quite as straight as my SAKO.

The TIKKA along with so many of the others, including the Savage I ordered, have black plastic stocks that are functional but not pretty. The TIKKA felt cheap in my hands - too much plastic. I opted for price, accuracy, and a trigger that feels pretty good out of the box.

I agree with Chuck. SAKO cuts too many corners with its TIKKA. Stock synthetics on most all brands are too lite and flimsy. Many barrel finishes look cheap and kiddish. Some triggers (especially CZ) are just plain nasty.

To each his or her own. Buy what works for you. Sell what doesn't.

 

[Hokkmike]

I don't like the way he lumps SAKO in with all of this. My experience with TIKKA is limited, but I have shot SAKO's for almost 3 decades. Compared to just about every other rifle I have encountered in the field comparisons make them an obvious preferred choice. At least he knows what the BEST White Tail caliber is !!!

 

[Skoghund]

I wonder in 50 years time if the hunters of the day will say they don't make rifles like the Tikka T3 any more.
Don't like plastic etc on rifles or shotguns. All my rifles are plastic free. But with Tikka and Sako you get a very accurate rifle with a good trigger out of the box " have shot quite a few".
In the 1970s went for a look round the Holland & Holland factory. The person showing us round said that their bolt action rifles were not as accurate as many commercial rifles produced at the time. You payed for workmanship and quality and got a rifle that would shoot a 3" group with a H&H.

 

[atblis]

I love my Tikka

awesome trigger, shoots better than any $350 dollar gun has the right to.

However, they are not worth 450-600 bucks. That is what they are selling for around me.

$350 it's an awesome gun
$500 it's a cheap piece of plastic crap (that still shoots great though).

They could be a much nicer gun.

 

[ArmedBear]

that cost/weight savings almost caused the end of an expensive out-of-state hunt for the rifle's owner

See, there's the real issue.

There's nothing wrong with grabbing a cheap but functional and accurate rifle to drive down the road and go after some local game. What's the worst thing that can happen? You break the gun and borrow one from the neighbor?

If you go on an expensive out-of-state hunt, get an expensive out-of-state rifle to do it with.

What Chuck Hawks, old geezer that he may claim to be, seems to have forgotten is how many rifles or shotguns that granddad or even dad bought from Monkey Wards or Sears, often with store brand labels. Some of those were tolerable, some were piles of crap. Precious few of those guns ever show up in store or gun show racks, because they fell apart, rusted under the seat of a farm truck, etc. They may not have had much plastic, but they had cheap, break-prone zinc castings, and stocks that would change POI when it got warm or cold out. They weren't bedded, they weren't Mausers, they weren't MOA rifles, and their parts weren't all machined steel.

The reason you can still find a Chilean Mauser at a gun show is that the rifle is still in one piece. It's natural selection. The old guns seem better in part because only the really well-made ones survived.

Furthermore, in 1895, the infantryman's rifle was the primary weapon in a nation's arsenal, at least when you're talking about war on land. There was undoubtedly a willingness to spend a good amount of money on each one, just as we now spend plenty of cash on tanks, jets, rockets, artillery, etc. I'm absolutely certain that an arsenal of Mausers constituted a MUCH larger portion of a nation's defense budget than all the AR rifles the US has ever bought, put together.

Again, the fact that a cheap rifle these days can shoot sub-MOA is a good thing, not a bad one! Just don't think that said cheap rifle is really equivalent to a top-end piece, and take it on a $10,000 hunting trip.

 

[hessy]

price

I don't get why Tikka T3 is a good gun for $350 and cheap crap for $500. We have Savage rifles with much crappier stocks selling here for $400. In .223Rem, Tikka has an accurate barrel with 1:8 twist-try it with other brands.
Do you guys shoot Glocks? I view my Tikka like a very accurate Glock with excellent trigger. You put a trigger and accuracy job into a Glock and you can easily double the price...
Granted, I prefer 1911 to Glocks, but in the rifle world, Tikka is good

 

[atblis]

Savages.

I don't own any Savages. For $400 dollars I'd buy a Tikka over a Savage any day.

My point is that price matters. Tikka/Beretta raised their prices, but not their quality.

 

[spooney]

I don't think it is a bad thing for rifles to be made out of cheaper materials, if our sport is only accessable to those who have large amounts of disposable income then there will be an ever smaller population of shooters in this country. We need inexpensive rifles, I know that it is not the case for many people on this forum but in the real world $600 is a large amount of money for a great many people.

 

[rbernie]

The sporterized 1895 Mauser in 7x57 that I used in my earlier example cost me a whopping $179 when I bought it five years ago. Cost is NOT a hard-n-fast determining factor in terms of quality received unless you make it so.

 

[ArmedBear]

Clearly, I would agree with your premise, rbernie: it can be a better and cheaper decision to buy a good used gun than a lousy new one. Hell, my Mauser cost me $100. It's military surplus, but could be sporterized for a reasonable price, and it's got nice iron sights, which most new guns don't.

However, what would it cost to get a brand-new Mauser sporter?

Two companies sell production guns with 98 actions in the US: Remington (Zastava) and Mauser. Real German Mausers are a tad on the expensive side, new. Nice guns, though.

Ruger makes a similar action that's not a Mauser action.

The Tikka is far cheaper than any of them.

It's been a while since I bought a new gun, for a damn good reason...

And the last NIB gun I bought was massively marked down because of some minor surface scratches in the stock finish. It's a walnut Weatherby Vanguard in .30-'06, which I'll agree with Chuck, is a great full-size gun, especially for the 400 bucks I paid, NIB.

Otherwise, the longer I shoot, the older the guns I purchase, it seems... This isn't necessarily because the older ones are better though sometimes they are; it's because the older ones are just as good, but a lot less expensive.

 

[ECVMatt]

I have bought a few rifles in the last year....

I have looked at Tika's each time, but have passed on them every time. The main thing the get me is they do not make a short action. I do not want a long action with stopper in it. That just seems cheesey and very cheap to me. For the price they charge, they should have a true short action. The same goes for the CZ 550. I really like them, but I will not use a short action cartridge in a long action gun. I think Chuck is pretty much right on.

Matt

 

[Bobhwry]

Looked at a Tikka this weekend.Felt like I was holding a piece of PVC.Not for me.